Mayor's aide learns housing needs on tour

He gets firsthand look at troubled areas and fields questions on a neighborhood tour

The crowd grew restive as the minutes ticked by with no sign of the important visitor.

If mayoral aide John Walsh didn't show up soon, one person suggested half-seriously, perhaps the dozens of community activists awaiting him should drive to his house and pound on the door. Cooler heads counseled patience.

His tardiness was soon forgotten. For the next two hours on a recent Saturday, Walsh got a close-up look at some of the urban problems he agreed to take on when he accepted a job in July as Mayor Bill White's deputy chief of staff for neighborhoods and housing.

In Acres Homes in northwest Houston, Walsh saw tires, sofas and refrigerators spilling onto residential streets from the ditches where they had been dumped.

In the Fifth Ward northeast of downtown, he spoke in halting Spanish to immigrants buying homes under contracts for deed, a controversial financing method that critics say leaves buyers vulnerable to abuse. He promised quick action to tear down crumbling, abandoned buildings.

In the Third Ward southeast of downtown, Walsh saw block after block of vacant land bought up by Perry Homes. ACORN members said they feared that the high-priced homes to be built on these lots would raise property values and push low-income residents out of the neighborhood.

Walsh managed to convince the activists that he was on their side while making it clear he would not be pressured into making commitments that he lacked the authority or resources to fulfill.

"This is an opportunity for me to learn," Walsh told the ACORN members.

Some of his comments during the tour illustrated the practical, problem-solving approach he's bringing to his government job after a successful private sector career. Walsh was chairman of Friendswood Development Corp. from 1986 to 1996 and president of the Houston Chamber of Commerce from 1996 to 1998.

When he was asked about gentrification of the Third Ward, Walsh said he is more concerned about displacement of low-income residents — a potential side effect of new development and rising property values.

He suggested that high-quality, affordable rental housing might be a more realistic goal than immediate homeownership for some low-income families. And he argued that revitalizing neighborhoods required more than simply building affordable housing.

"Trying to protect the social structure of the community is incredibly difficult," Walsh said. "You want to attract the young families, and to do that, you've got to have good schools."

During the tour, Walsh fielded questions about the city's troubled home-repair program for elderly and disabled homeowners, administered by the Housing and Community Development department. Federal officials suspended the program a year ago after finding evidence of shoddy repairs and overpayment to contractors, and few homes have been repaired since the program resumed July 1.

"I'll just say that the housing department is a tough project," Walsh said. "We don't see eye to eye on a lot of things."